{"id":2716,"date":"2021-10-13T00:59:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T00:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=2716"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:34:38","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:34:38","slug":"cornfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=2716","title":{"rendered":"CORNFIELD"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This afternoon I spent an hour in a cornfield a couple of miles east of Columbus.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

“Visit a farm” was not even on my To Do List. Maybe it was a God thing. Time will tell.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

This morning I had started reading When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor … and Yourself <\/i>by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

The premise of the book is that simply handing money to the poor is not actually helping them … and may even cause more harm than good. “Simply having sufficient material things is not the same as ‘poverty alleviation’ … We want people to fulfill their calling ‘to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever’ in their work and in all that they do.” Getting it right involves wisdom, patience and a truly biblical worldview.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

I am not doing the book’s message justice. I haven’t finished it yet, but it strikes me as a thorough and Scriptural look at how Christians are called to love the poor of this world.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

So is it a coincidence when later in the day I am standing in a cornfield with Dave Ketchum, whose life and ministry illustrate well the very approach the book advocates?<\/p>\n\n\n

Tomorrow I will tell you: 1) what Dave was doing in the cornfield and 2) how I happened to join him there.<\/p>\n\n\n

[Hint: 1) it’s about improving the lives and spirits of people in Ghana and Haiti and elsewhere and 2)seems like a God thing.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This afternoon I spent an hour in a cornfield a couple of miles east of Columbus.\u00a0 “Visit a farm” was not even on my To Do List. Maybe it was a God thing. Time will tell. This morning I had started reading When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor … and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2718,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716\/revisions\/2718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}